


Riding a Tide

by shocked_into_shame



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Car Accidents, M/M, Minor Character Death, Sadness, billy's background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 20:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12992334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shocked_into_shame/pseuds/shocked_into_shame
Summary: Billy was aware, of course, that sometimes his mother and father fought. He asked his mom about it one day and she wrapped her kind, warm arms around him. “Sometimes adults fight, baby boy,” she had said, resting her head on his. “It doesn’t mean we love each other or you any less.”





	Riding a Tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [botanicapoetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/botanicapoetica/gifts).



> This is an angsty gift for the 'Billy' to my 'killy'. Happy birthday, dear friend.

_“Daddy, I can’t see the lions!” he whined, tugging at his father’s shirttail. His dad smiled down at him, ruffling his blonde curls. His little angel, his little cherub, eyes just like his wife’s._

_“Well,” he responded, looking down at his little son. He pretended to ponder, searching for a great, big thought, before finally exclaiming, “How about I put you on my shoulders!”_

_Bright blue eyes widened and little grubby hands clapped in enjoyment. “I’ll be taller than you, daddy!” his petite, shrill voice called out, excitement clear on his features._

_His mother crossed her arms and shook her head. “Honey, I swear to God. If you drop him, you are sleeping on the couch tonight.”_

_“Oh stop, Lyla,” he huffed out, laughing and grabbing his son beneath his armpits and hauling him up onto his shoulders with a grunt. “Can you see the lion better now, buddy?”_

_“Oh, wow! I can see him! He’s got blonde hair just like me!” he said excitedly, pointing toward the great animal in front of them. He looked down at his mother, so tall and great and big from this height, a wide smile on his face. “Don’t worry, mommy,” Billy said. “Daddy will never drop me!”_

* * *

 

_His mother’s lap was possibly the greatest place in the entire world. Warm and comforted, sitting on his mother’s lap, Billy could take in her sweet smelling perfume, listen to her sing songs in her lark voice, listen to her tell stories._

_He was 7, now. He doubted that any of the other boys at school still sat in their mother’s lap from time to time. And maybe that made him weird – maybe that made him a baby. But there was something magical about Lyla Hargrove’s lap that made all his troubles go away. Billy swore to himself that even when he was a grown up, he’d still sit in his mother’s lap. And his babies would get to experience the magic too, would get to sit in her lap and bask in her beauty and warmth._

_His dad, though, didn’t like that Billy still sat on his mother’s lap at night, right before it was time to go off to dreamland. And Billy tried to sleep, he swore, but sometimes voices travelled down the hallway into his little bedroom. And he heard his parents talking._

_His dad didn’t like it when he sat in his mother’s lap. Lyla babied Billy, he said. It was time for Billy to grow up._

* * *

 

_Billy liked his dad, sure, but not as much as his mom. But there were good times with his dad, warm sunlit times in the backyard, playing catch or grilling hot dogs._

_His dad was proud of him, even, Billy thought, when he got on the 5 th grade basketball team when he was only in the 3rd grade. Neil slapped him on the back with a great big smile and said, “That’s my boy.” _

_But Mom didn’t want Billy to_ just _play basketball. She wanted Billy to learn to play the piano. Dad told her that his son wasn’t going to do a sissy thing like that._

_Billy thought that playing the piano might be kind of nice, especially if he could play along to his mother’s singing._

_But he told his mom that he didn’t want to play the piano. He just wanted to play basketball like his dad wanted him to._

* * *

 

_Billy was aware, of course, that sometimes his mother and father fought. He asked his mom about it one day and she wrapped her kind, warm arms around him. “Sometimes adults fight, baby boy,” she had said, resting her head on his. “It doesn’t mean we love each other or you any less.”_

_That had assured Billy, then. He felt relieved, relieved that what his friend from school had told him about his parents getting a divorce wasn’t true. All of his fears, all of his doubts were_ wrong _, because his mother and father loved each other, and they loved him._

* * *

 

_The first time that Billy ever saw them fight with his own two eyes was in the afternoon on his 11 th birthday. That morning, his mother surprised him with something that he had confessed to her he wanted more than anything else. _

_She took him to the mall right when it opened, and there she let Billy pick out his very first earring. He chose a small gold hoop, because his mother told him that it’d look nice next to his hair, which was starting to curl past his ears, almost to the nape of his neck._

_It hurt, getting his ear pierced, but not as much as it hurt when his dad told him he looked like a girl with it in._

_“Neil, don’t say that,” his mother had screeched, and Billy wondered if this fiery woman was really his mom. “I think he looks nice!”_

_“What I want to know,” his dad started, intense and cold and mean, a look that Billy had never seen before. And then it dawned on him – this was the Neil that his mother knew. This was who his dad really was. “Is why, Lyla, you didn’t consult with the man of the house before you took our son to the mall to be turned into a faggot.” His father’s big hand curled around his mother’s arm, and his mom’s beautiful features curled up in pain._

_“You’re hurting me,” she bit out, yanking her arm away. She had gotten in her car, then, and sped off, leaving Billy alone with his father on his birthday._

_“I knew you always had odd tastes, Billy,” he said, directing that cold look toward him. “I just never thought you’d go behind my back and do something like this.”_

_His mom didn’t come back that night._

_They forgot to give him his cake. He never got to blow out the candles._

_He would have wished for a different dad._

* * *

 

_Fighting in front of their son for the first time seemed to open up a dam, because it was suddenly like his mother and father did nothing but argue anymore. He was approaching 12 and a half, now, and his hair was almost touching his shoulders._

_The day his father caught his mother brushing Billy’s hair in the bathroom was a mess. He had yelled, and Billy was honest-to-God scared. His dad never hit him or his mom, but when he yelled like that, Billy believed that he_ could _hit them, if he really wanted to._

_They fought about everything, it seemed. Everything that had to do with Billy, that is. They fought about his hair, about his earring. They fought about what he wanted to wear and the music he wanted to listen to._

_The only times that Billy felt safe, then, was when his dad was at work. And sometimes, if he knew his dad wouldn’t be home soon, he’d curl up on his mother’s lap on the couch. It didn’t matter that he was a full foot taller than her, now._

* * *

 

_Billy was 13. They were driving home from Billy’s school after a parent-teacher meeting. His teacher told his mom and dad that Billy had gotten a D in math, and he had been getting in fights with the other students._

_His mother, bless her, was fiercely loyal in protecting Billy from the wrath of his father. “Stop being so hard on him, Neil,” she yelled, turning in her seat toward his dad._

_“Stop being so_ easy _on him, Lyla!” he retorted, looking away from the road to look into his wife’s eyes. “You let him get away with everything and he has no respect for me or for this household!”_

_The yelling continued. Billy felt anxiety creeping up in his stomach watching from the backseat, especially when his dad turned his head away from the road to look at his mother in rage._

_So it was no surprise, then, when his dad didn’t stop in time and they were side swept by another car. His mother turned around in her seat, panic on her face as she yelled and shoved Billy down, his head pressed into the leather of the back seat._

_The screams died down. Billy didn’t want to lift his head up. He was too afraid to find out what had happened._

* * *

 

 _Death had never been something that Billy considered. It was so far from his mind when the issue of mom and dad fighting was always there in the forefront. So he hadn’t prepared himself, hadn’t gotten himself_ ready _for losing his mother._

_At the funeral, people hugged him and told him that she had died protecting him, and that they were sorry. He didn’t know if he was supposed to feel good about that, if he was supposed to be glad that his mother had sacrificed her life for his._

_Neil was certainly unhappy about it. “Even in death,” Neil had spit at him on the car ride home from burying the most wonderful woman on the planet. “Even in death your mother blindly protected you. You didn’t deserve that kind of attention. You are a disrespectful brat, and things are going to change around here.”_

_And things did change. No more cuddling in his mother’s lap. No more fun at the Hargrove house. The night after the funeral, Billy had yelled at his father, told him to_ fuck off _. His dad backhanded him across the face for the very first time and it was crystal clear – things_ weren’t _the same anymore._

 _What surprised Billy, though, was that his dad never made him cut his hair or take out his earring. He thought, maybe, that his dad looked at his long hair or his dangling earring and thought of_ Lyla _, and that maybe he did have a heart in there after all._

_But it was doubtful._

* * *

_Billy got mean. Billy got mean and cocky and spiteful. He started drinking at 14, and smoking at 15. It was a shame, people around the neighborhood said. He was such a nice, happy little boy growing up._

_But what did being a nice, happy little boy ever fucking get him? It got him a dead mom and a fucking asshole of a father. There was no sense in being nice anymore._

_Especially not when his dad surprised him with a new wife and a step-sister for his 16 th birthday._

* * *

 

_Maxine seemed like an okay kid to Billy, but he refused to get close to her. Everything that he ever touched in his life turned to fucking shit. That was clear. But he was protective of her, in a way - in his own fucking way. She didn’t see it that way, of course, but every time Billy got yelled at or punched or slapped for taking the blame for something she did, he felt like he was doing a decent job at the whole protective thing._

_That was, of course, until Max saw him doing a line of coke with a buddy in his car. She wasn’t supposed to be out of school, yet; she wasn’t supposed to fucking_ see _that. And she tattled. She fucking told his dad about it, and he went fucking ballistic on him, screaming and yelling and knocking shit over._

_“We are going to go to the middle of nowhere, Billy,” his dad yelled with a slap across his face. “I am going to pick the most boring, the most calm town in the entire continental United States. I am going to find the place I think you would like the least. And that’s where we will go.”_

_Billy felt that she’d probably seen the lesser of two evils. If she had left that school just a few minutes earlier, she would have seen Billy and his friend kissing. And if Neil had found out about that, he wouldn’t have just moved the family._

* * *

 

_That’s how Billy Hargrove didn’t get to spend senior year with his friends in California. Instead, all he got was the stench of cow shit and the boredom that was Hawkins, Indiana. The worst thing, he thought, about all of this – was that now he was so far away from his fucking mom._

_He could barely even remember what sitting in her lap felt like anymore. And moving to Hawkins, Indiana seemed to solidify what he had known all along. She was never coming back. He would never get to sit in her lap as a grown up. He would never get to see his own babies sit in her lap._

_He was a lost cause, then. Once he got to Indiana, he got worse. He was driving like a fucking maniac, and threatening Max, and picking fights with a beautiful fucking kid who made his heart curl up in his chest._

_It took a tranquillizer dart to stop him from punching the one bright spot in all of fucking Indiana to death. That was a new low._

_The thing about lows, though, is that there is somewhere to go from there. And the thing about good people, good people like Steve Harrington, is that they see the good in you, too._

* * *

 

A 20 year old Billy drives home after a late night concert, easier now, safer now than he used to drive. He’s got precious cargo. Steve, his fucking _boyfriend_ , sits in the passenger seat, and Billy’s got one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on Steve’s thigh, their fingers intertwined.

Billy hazards a quick glance in the rear-view mirror and looks at Max, sleeping soundly in the backseat. It’s her 16th birthday, and he and Steve took her to her first ever arena concert. It’d tuckered her out, apparently.

The thing about Indiana that Billy had never quite gotten used to was the snow and the ice. So his reaction time isn’t the greatest, especially when he’s distracted by his sleeping little sister and the feel of his boyfriend’s hand in his.

When he spins out, his tires sliding on black ice, the panic curls up in his chest and he thinks this is it. This is when all those horrible things he did and said finally catch up to him. This is when his happiness runs out, just like it always does.

The front of his car smashes into a tree, and the sound startles Max awake. The airbags deploy and Billy squeezes his eyes shut, gets ready to stare death in the face.

But it doesn’t happen. Steve gasps out, “Baby, are you okay?” And Billy opens his eyes and Steve is okay, no bumps, no bruises. Max looks a little traumatized, but she’s okay, too.

He must not look okay, because Steve is reaching out and holding his face in his palm and giving him this fucking _look_.

And Billy realizes, then, that he didn’t even attempt to protect Steve or Max. He’s a fucking coward, isn’t he? All he could do was close his eyes and swallow down the bile in his throat.

He vows, then and there, that he’s going to protect Steve with everything he has from now on. Even if he has to die in the process.

Just like his mother did for him.  


End file.
